Last Updated on July 3, 2024 by The ZenMaid Team
A sneak peak of the three secrets to grow your business
- Digitally organize your business
- Build a team that delivers knock-your-socks-off service
- Build with the end in mind
Myths you might believe in your cleaning service
There are four common myths we see many cleaning business owners get stuck on. Are you one of them? Check to see if you’ve fallen into any of these myths:
#1: Your cleaning business needs to slow down to take a vacation
If you ever take a vacation (which sometimes feels like a far-off dream), your business slows down or takes a hit. At the very least, you have to work overtime the weeks leading up to vacation to make it happen.
Truth: You didn’t start a business so it could run you. The benefit of owning a business is to experience both time and money freedom. It’s possible to build a business that runs itself, even when you’re gone.
#2: Hiring quality staff is impossible these days
It seems impossible to hire quality workers. No one wants to work, let alone show up and do a good job.
Truth: When employees are both trained and treated well, they want to do a great job.
#3: You can wait to digitally organize when your business gets big enough
Your business is small, so you don’t need to worry about going digital yet… right?
Truth: You need to start digitally organizing before your business grows, not the other way around.
#4: Your team can be efficient without digitalization organization
Even though you’re not digitally organized, you still manage to get everything done.
Truth: Sure, everything might get done. But it’s often at the expense of your limited time. Your team will be more efficient when you’re digitally organized. It empowers them to do their jobs without needing your help all day long.
Do any of these myths feel a bit too familiar to you? If they do, don’t panic! The three secrets to growing your six-figure cleaning business will help. Let’s dive right into the first one.
Digitally organize your cleaning business
We’ve said it already; we’ll say it again: you need to get your business digitally organized! Growing your business to six figures without getting digitally organized is harder than it should be, and frankly, isn’t a business you’ll be happy to run.
Onboarding
Whether it’s client onboarding or new employees orientation, be sure to digitize the process.
The way to digitize your client onboarding experience is to focus on the sales call, your follow-up, client resources, contracts, invoicing, customer surveys, and reviews.
For your sales calls with potential clients, type out a script that your team can use as a go-to resource. Share your script digitally with every member of your team who takes sales calls.
Similar to your client onboarding, there are steps you can automate when hiring new employees. These include the application, scheduling the interview, conducting the interview, orientation checklists, and training.
We’ve got a great resource to learn how to automate every step of your employee onboarding process — read about it right here!
Evaluation
Evaluations in every area of your businesses help you continue to grow and improve services. Digitally record every customer survey and review you receive. Save all of this information in one location for easy reference.
Also, you’ll want to digitally organize your employee evaluations to know when to reward and when there are areas for improvement.
Workflows
If one of your team members left unexpectedly, are you prepared to have someone fill in right away? Record the workflows that every position in your business uses. This will give you the ability to delegate tasks to new team members as needed.
Sales and marketing
A clear and repeatable marketing plan is the key to keeping leads coming through the door. If you’ve been throwing ideas at the wind, hoping they land, it’s time to digitize your sales and marketing.
Start collecting data from your marketing campaigns so you can start measuring the results. Take note of what works and what hasn’t worked — there’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time you set out to get new clients.
If you need help finding ideas for your marketing plan, check out our 22 content ideas for your maid service.
How to choose the right digital platform for your cleaning business
There are plenty of online platforms designed to help you digitally streamline your business. At ZenMaid, we offer an automation solution for cleaning businesses just like yours. Replace your daily tools like Google Calendar, Excel, pen & paper and save TONS of time managing your daily tasks. Try ZenMaid for free today!
For more resources on digital tools for your cleaning business, read this article in the ZenMaid Magazine. You’ll find the complete list under the section called Technologies to embrace for your cleaning business.
Action item: This week, set up a digital folder in a free Google Drive for administration and marketing. In each folder, add a document that summarizes a workflow for the associated category. (Example: “How to create and execute each month’s marketing plan,” or “Checklist for new client onboarding.”)
Build a team that delivers knock-your-socks-off service
We all want employees that deliver knock-your-socks-off service, right? But how do we build a team who does that 100% of the time?
Great service starts with a service promise. Forbes describes a service promise as “a complement to your company’s mission or vision statement.” If you don’t already have a service promise, consider your company’s mission and vision and find an inspiring focus point where they overlap.
Our service promise at ZenMaid is to transform your cleaning business. Transformation in 7 Days or your first month is free. Guaranteed. Every employee, client, and new customer knows our service promise; it helps keep us all moving forward with the same goal.
With your service promise as a guiding point, build a team that can deliver knock-your-socks-off service. Establish a standard of how your team responds to clients, gives feedback, and handles challenges.
It’s not enough to post your service promise on the wall or mention once during training. Make sure you communicate your service promise to your team clearly and often.
Nine times out of ten, your team wants to help you reach your goals. They want to do a good job and be part of a successful business. Use your service promise as a motivating encouragement to strive for the best at all times.
Action Item: This month, implement these five steps:
- Communicate your service promise to your team
- Outline the expectations of the service promise
- Have a clearly laid out process on how to meet the service expectation
- Assess your teams work
- Provide encouraging feedback
Build with the exit in mind
This one is a shocker for most people! But we’re here to tell you that you should be building your business with the exit in mind. Here’s why: Someday you’ll need to sell your business.
Whether you want to retire, franchise, or sell your business, keeping the exit in mind is essential. Building with the exit in mind means creating a business that will be easy to sell, profitable, and successful without you there. Here are some ideas to help get you into the ‘exit in mind’ mindset:
- Write an operations manual
- Record how many clients calls you get per day. (If you’re really busy, record how many you get per hour.)
- Record many leads you get per hour when you’re offline
- Have all your workflows laid out for each position
- Work to build a business with trusted staff and operations that can run without you there
- Strive to leave a legacy with your business
Yes, profitability and cash flow margins are important; but at the end of the day, building a repeatable business is the most important thing you can do. Your future potential buyer (or franchisee) needs to see that they can operate your business successfully without starting from scratch.
This, of course, will take time. It’s not going to be an easy five-minute or even two-week task. But don’t be discouraged! Many business owners have done it and you can too.
Action item: To start building with the end in mind, identify the gaps in your operations with these four considerations.
- Identify what’s working well
- Consider what can be improved
- Evaluate if your daily efforts bring in leads and close sales
- Ask: Are my clients happy? Is my team happy?
Recap
To recap, the three secrets to growing a six-figure cleaning service are to get yourself digitally organized, build a team based on your service promise, and build with the exit in mind. These big concepts feel overwhelming at first, but we hope our action items included with each step will help get you started!
As a bonus, Sheri-Anne Wooley created a Six Figure Asset Freebie for you to download today!
About the presenter
Sheri-Anne Woolley is the operations and workflow strategist of Sheri-Anne Inc, a Six-Figure Business Consultancy for service-based solopreneurs. Her mission is to help business owners meet their revenue targets, delegate with ease, and grow their business beyond six figures. Sheri-Anne Woolley provides businesses with the tools & resources to get organized, set & scale processes, and properly take control of their business.
This talk first aired at the 2021 Maid Service Success Summit.
The Maid Summit is an annual online event that brings together the most successful leaders in the cleaning industry, like Debbie Sardone, Angela Brown, Courtney Wisely, Amy Caris, Chris Schwab and more. Get free access to masterclasses and workshops that will help you to grow, scale and automate your cleaning business so you can get more leads and create more profit. Make sure you’re on our email list to find out how to get free tickets to the next event.
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